Placement of external oil cooler on Outlaw?

[John Montgomery]

I have been reading older posts about engine choices with great interest. Whilst I have the original engine for my BT6, it came with a type IV engine and I have now rebuilt another with a better core and all new parts - it has been an expensive business (I don't think that there is a low cost option anymore) but it should provide adequate power and has been optimized for torque.
I am using a 911 type fan and housing developed by CTP in Germany (The older engine had an upright fan conversion which I did not like).

Question: Has anyone thought of a good place to put an external oil cooler? The current version is in the left rear wheel well with an electric fan, which is not optimal and I wondered if anyone has a better solution. I have kept the body as close to original as possible so would prefer not to cut grills under the front bumper etc.

thanks

[Bill Sargent]

John,

One solution would be to do something similar to what the factory did for the 356 B Carrera II cars - Place two oil coolers in the front behind the upper horn grills. The Carrera used 15mm OD, 13mm ID, steel lines exiting from the passenger side of the engine compartment into the wheel well. From there they were routed along the inner fender down to the rocker area, under the sill and into the front wheel well area, then along the inner fender to the horn grill area on the passenger side where one cooler was located and continuing across the front of the battery box behind the nose sheet metal to the other horn grill area where a second cooler was located. There are some good photos on Justin Rio's thread at this link of his installation. viewtopic.php?f=4&t=20416 Justin is going to install a 2.5 liter Polo motor and chose to use 19mm OD aluminum hard lines to the front and use only one oil cooler on the passenger side behind the horn grill. I have made a more factory like installation in my 59A cab using the 15mm steel lines and the two pushrod engine oil coolers up front - it works perfectly well to cool the 2 liter 4 cam motor in the car. See viewtopic.php?f=4&t=27292.

The downside of this type of installation is bending and fitting the hard oil lines as well as welding the oil line support brackets in the fender wells. This work is most easily accomplished with the car on a rotessire or roll over frame so the passenger side can be positioned to allow work while standing up. A simpler and cheaper option would be to use a similar routing for the oil lines, but instead of hard lines use the soft braided stainless covered oil lines (e.g. Early Perform-O-Flex) from front to rear. This would still require installation of brackets to support the oil lines, but require no work to bend lines and have fewer potential leak points due to fewer fittings. For fittings I would use silver AN fittings. The original Argus type fittings used on Carreras are a) expensive and b) hard to make up on the hose.

I hope this helps.